Green heat for home

Ben O’Connell

An Alnwick-based biomass firm has custom-fitted a £250,000 wood-pellet heating system into a Cumbrian care home which is using green power to keep its residents warm and comfortable.

re:heat worked for 18 months with the owners of the Rosehill residential home at Aglionby to design a bespoke, sustainable heating system to replace oil-fired boilers.

The 500kW biomass boiler is fuelled by wood pellets stored in a new building on site constructed by McKnight & Son after re:heat’s detailed design work to understand the heating needs of the grade II-listed care home. re:heat also manages the fuel supply and delivery of wood pellet stocks at the home, to ensure residents are never without heat and hot water.

The new system is cutting fuel bills for owners, the Henry Lonsdale Trust, in conjunction with benefits the home receives via the Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme.

John Mallinson, chairman of the Henry Lonsdale Charitable Trust, said: “We were looking to make the home more sustainable, looking for an environmentally-friendly heating option to make us more competitive in the future. The added bonus for us with the biomass boiler is that we have installed something environmentally-friendly which provides us with all the heat and hot water our residents need.

“We’ve also installed a solar farm which gives us our own electricity to use, and when we have a surplus we sell it via the National Grid. Biomass is far more sustainable than oil. We chose re:heat based on their expertise and track record and this has proven to be a great decision.”

Ben Tansey, re:heat director, said the biomass boiler is large enough to generate heat for 25 average-sized family homes.

“What the biomass boiler gives the residents and owners of Rosehill is a lower cost, sustainable and more robust system than the oil boilers they had,” he added.

“We sat down with the care-home owners to really understand what their requirements were, why they wanted to change, to look at the design of the listed building and see how this system could be carefully fitted in place.

“It is important that the residents have a high and continuous level of heat and the technical solutions we have put forward for Rosehill have ensured that we are future-proofing their heating system.

“The principle we took for the whole scheme was that with some additional capital expenditure in the future, they will have the option to switch to alternative renewable fuel sources – such as wood chip for instance – so they remain flexible and able to take advantage of cost effective options which may arise.”